The present invention relates to a method for collecting, analyzing, and reporting human performance in general, and management performance in particular.
An organization's success is largely dependent on its management, and, therefore, it is critical that managers be evaluated effectively. An important part of evaluating the performance of a manager includes ascertaining how the manager's co-workers view his or her performance. This has often been done with ratings of questionnaire items. For example, respondents are presented with a list of statements describing a behavior, skill, attitude, or disposition and are asked to choose the option on a response scale that best characterizes the manager in question. Prior art response scales typically take one of two forms: (1) evaluation scales; or (2) frequency/magnitude scales.
Evaluation scales ask the respondent to judge how well the target individual performs a given task or behavior, as shown in Table 1 below. On the other hand, frequency/magnitude scales ask the respondent to evaluate how often the target individual engages in the behavior and how much the respondent agrees that the statement describes the target, an example of which is also shown in Table 1 below.
TABLE 1Examples of conventional response scalesEvaluation scale1How would you rate this person's competence in the following areas?NotUnder-CompetentVery strongOutstandingdevelopeddeveloped34512Frequency/magnitude scale2Judge how frequently each statement fits the person you are describing.Not at allOnce in a whileSometimesFairly oftenFrequently,0123if not always4Note:1Taken from the Executive Success Profile (Hezlett et al., 1996);2taken from the Full Range of Leadership Development: Manual foe the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass & Avolio, 1997)
Evaluation scales do a fine job of capturing behaviors that are “underdone,” which are represented with a low score. These scales, however, are ambiguous and misleading with regards to behaviors that are “overdone” because low scores tend to confuse the overdo/underdo distinction. For instance, a low rating of 2-“Underdeveloped” in response to “Takes preventative measures to avoid crisis management” may indicate a careless lack of foresight (underdo) or an ultra-conservative vigilance (overdo). Evaluation-type scales do not directly indicate why an individual is rated as being ineffective, and do not reflect the underdo/overdo distinction.
Frequency/magnitude rating scales are purely descriptive of the extent of a behavior or characteristic. Higher ratings generally reflect more of a given behavior, a stronger tendency, or whether something is more or less characteristic of the target being rated. It is often assumed that higher ratings on these scales indicate proficiency or mastery. This is evident in the fascination with getting “high scores.”
Another problem associated with frequency/magnitude type scales is that of relating scores on evaluation scales with other measures using product-moment correlation in validation research, which is research that attempts to demonstrate that the measure does indeed measure what it is intended to measure. The product-moment correlation statistical procedure (and other linear data modeling techniques common in the behavioral sciences) rests on the assumption that more of a given behavior is “better.” For example, a high rating of 4 (“Frequently, if not always”) in response to the item “Speaks up in a group” using the frequency/magnitude scale could mean one of two things: either the individual speaks up appropriately often or that the individual dominates group discussions. Therefore, a high score does not mean that the individual is an effective communicator and group leader, etc. Again, there is no provision for the overdo extreme.
Another limitation of prior art methods for collecting data using questionnaires is that they fail to measure lopsidedness, which is the tendency to overdo one side and underdo the other side of a dichotomy or duality. Examples of such dichotomies include asserting oneself versus being responsive to others and talking versus listening. The view that human beings have difficulty striking a desirable balance between opposing behaviors, values, and attitudes has been around for a long time. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, for instance, spoke about the “interplay of opposites” and how, for example, the healthy adult can comfortably play both “feminine” and “masculine” roles in social behavior. Carl Jung also noted that one indicator that an adult is in an arrested state of development is a chronic reliance on the feminine mode to the exclusion of the masculine, or vice-versa.
The prior art methods for evaluating an individual's performance as a leader and/or manager have failed to directly capture the tendency to overdo one side and underdo the other side of a pair of complementary behaviors, attitudes, and other characteristics. This is because the prior art methods utilize questionnaires that lack a rating scale that directly indicates overdoing. Thus, there is a need in the art for a method for collecting and analyzing human performance data that directly measures overdoing a behavior, skill, or attribute.